Category: Bulletin Board

Anne McNevin, Institute for the Study of International Development Speaker Series

7 September, 2017

A common set of assumptions shape contemporary debates about borders and migration. Some of these assumptions are long-standing and indicative of deeply entrenched social, political and cultural norms; others have emerged more recently but have become firmly lodged in governmental logics, policy settings, and popular imaginations. These assumptions provide the starting points for analysis and proposition, determining what needs to be established to make a credible case and what can be taken as given. What is taken as given are particular relations between mobility, immobility and membership that have come to seem so obvious that they hardly seem worth mentioning – and yet these relations are not as stable as they seem. In this talk, I examine how this givenness plays out across a spectrum of debate from restrictive to progressive perspectives. Pointing to some of the gaps, contradictions and oversights at stake, I also reflect on critical resources available to enliven new horizons of the possible.

The McGill Center for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism hereby invites you to its big conference of William A. Schabas moderated by François Crépeau and followed by a discussion with Frédéric Mégret and Nidal N. Jurdi.

As you know, 2017 is a very pivotal year for international criminal justice. It marks the 72nd anniversary of the establishment of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, the 71st anniversary of the establishment of military tribunals in the Far East, a special year for the United Nations ad hoc tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda both of which are in a gradual completion of their respective mandates and without forgetting the anniversary of the entry into force of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

15 years after the establishment of this judicial institution as a permanent body with a universal vocation operating under the new premise of complementarity to national jurisdictions, this tribunal is now at a crossroads: high-level state officials accused for having committed grave crimes continue to travel around the world, key witnesses are assassinated, charges have been dropped by the office of the prosecutor itself, preliminary examinations stagnate whenever the most powerful are concerned. In Syria, as well as in every situation where nationals of the permanent members of the Security Council or their allies are concerned, it is a total inactivity. Even where the judicial system seems to be moving forward, the immunities of heads of state on the one hand and, most seriously, immunities for heads of non-state parties on the other hand, have come to poison the procedure. On the African side, some states start slamming the door of the Court while building a relatively parallel system at a regional level.

In light of all these challenges in the institutionalization of the universality of international justice, seven decades after the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals, more than two decades after the creation of ad hoc tribunals and in view of all the challenges faced by the ICC in only 15 years of operation, the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism organizes this timely conference that brings together different perspectives on this unique and topical theme: “Is the world ready for global justice?”

Reviewing the Stated Goals and Unintended Policy Consequences of the 2012 Reform

9 May, 2017

The authors of the report write: “The SSHRC research project explores the practical and human rights implications associated with the recent moves towards securitization of migration in Canada. Although our research addresses both migration and refugee policies and legislation, our specific focus in this Working Paper are the refugee measures affected by the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act and the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. The Working Paper’s twofold purpose is, first, to examine whether reforms following the adoption of these Acts – which we shorthand to “the 2012 refugee reform” – work in intended ways and have reached their stated goals, notably protecting the “refugee system’s integrity”, including public safety and security. Second, the Working Paper aims at identifying some of the unanticipated consequences of the new measures. It is argued that the government has not been successful in reaching the stated objectives of the laws and policies under review. In addition, these measures have had some unintended and counter-productive results. We hope that the current government will take seriously the need to make progressive changes to our RSD system, in order to better protect the rights of refugees, restore Canada’s compliance with its international human rights obligations, and ensure smoother overall functioning”

“Making Canada’s Refugee System Faster and Fairer” is a working paper recently published by the Canadian Association For Refugee And Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS). To access the full paper, click here.

Described as “A global initiative celebrating the role Montreal has played in advancing human rights worldwide and re-energising the international human rights community in a time of great upheaval”

The two-day event is organized by Amnesty International, the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (Concordia University), the Armenian National Committee of Québec and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

For more information on the conference, please visit the following site